Definition
An archaic Law French adverbial term meaning "also" or "in like manner." Used in early Norman legal instruments and texts to signal that a preceding rule, condition, or grant applied equally to what followed — functioning as a connective to extend or duplicate legal effect across clauses or parties.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering altresi in primary sources are almost certainly working with Norman or Anglo-Norman legal documents from the medieval period — most likely instruments, charters, or customals composed in Law French following the Conquest. The term carries no substantive legal doctrine of its own; its significance is purely structural and linguistic. When parsing a clause containing altresi, the researcher's task is to identify what preceding provision is being extended and to whom or what it applies "in like manner."
The chief research trap is misreading the term as a proper noun or technical legal concept with independent meaning. It is not a term of art in the way that seisin or feoffment are — it is a connective particle, closer to grammar than doctrine. Missing it or misreading it can cause a researcher to treat two parallel provisions as a single undivided clause, or conversely to sever what the drafter intended to link.
Because altresi appears in Norman French legal texts, it surfaces most frequently in materials covered by Law Mind sources dealing with Anglo-Norman tenure, early English land law, and the Consuetudines et Justicie or similar Conquest-era regulatory compilations. Burrill's citation to "LL. Gul. Conq. 15" points to the Laws of William the Conqueror — a collection of Norman ordinances whose transmission and authenticity were debated by legal historians well into the nineteenth century. Researchers relying on that citation should be aware that the Laws of William the Conqueror as printed in early modern collections are composite texts; the specific article numbered 15 may vary across editions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the Law Mind shelf sources. The entry is minimal: it identifies the term as Law French, gives the meaning as "also; in like manner," and supplies a single citation to the Laws of William the Conqueror. No further exposition is offered, which is consistent with the term's purely grammatical function — there is simply no doctrine to expound.
No entry appears in Bouvier, Black, or other major historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus, reflecting how narrowly the term circulated even among legal lexicographers. Its absence from later dictionaries is itself informative: by the time English legal vocabulary had been substantially anglicized, connective particles like altresi had vanished from active use and were of interest only to antiquarians and historians of Norman law.
The companion entry in Burrill for ALTUM / ALTUS (Latin: high; deep) appears immediately adjacent and is unrelated — the proximity is alphabetical only, not conceptual.
Jurisdictional Note
Strictly a feature of Anglo-Norman and Norman French legal texts. No modern jurisdiction employs this term in contemporary practice. Its relevance is confined to historical English law prior to the gradual displacement of Law French from legal instruments, a process substantially complete by the late medieval period and formalized by statute in the seventeenth century.